Someone to Tell the Story

I woke, thinking of Richard's holsteins,
at the time I was rebuilding Dean's log house,
watching as they came up through the woods
to the small clearings where the grass grew sweet.

The woods, and the steep hillside, was argyle-patterned
with paths made by critters with feet and hooves,
finding the most effective way to get from there to here;
around downed trees, easy up the hillside, allowing
chance and success to choose the usual way.

Our cities are like that.
People walked to those places
where there was water, and food,
following the paths other hungry and thirsty critters
had made, first tentatively, then regularly.

When the horses came, they walked there, too,
and so did the wagons.  The paths were widened.
Drainage ditches lined the widened paths and, later,
sewer lines were laid.  The houses were built.

The mice, the rabbits and the deer laid out the town.
The cattle carved the paths deeper and wider.
Then the wagons and the trains and the trucks.

Cities carry with them decisions made long past.
People drive down streets where the cows walked.
There are no cows, now, but the streets are there.

Humankind once hunted the deer and the rabbits,
once walked up the hill to gather the grain that grew
on the hilltop.  Humans learned to tend the grain,
learned to tame the cattle, learned agriculture.
Humans built water wheels, and ground the grain,
burned coal, and made steam, made steam engines
and made the fields larger, made tractors, and trucks
and trains and planes.  The old tracks are still there.

That is what is happening to us today.
The old tracks are there, underground, and in Detroit.
There are, still, hunters and gatherers.  There are, still,
farmers and flour mills, but something new is happening.

Now there are microscopes, and telescopes,
and giant contraptions taking matter apart
just to see how everything works.
Now there are fuel cells, and cell phones,
and solar arrays to catch the sun.  There are
large maps of the tiny materials that shape
how life develops, and how it might be changed.

Politically, there are dinosaurs bellowing at us
that we have to get back to those water wheels,
those coal stacks, and those 1958 Chevrolets.
They think the problems is that we shipped
the steels mills to Korea, and the auto factories to Japan.

No!  The problem is that we need to build new
capabilities where our old cities stood, where once
Richard's good humored holsteins came up the hill.
We need to develop better and safer and enduring
energy sources.  We need to educate, not only our children,
but ourselves to learn the things we need to change.

Somebody is going to do it.
Some people are already doing it.
Our schools are about 25th best in the world.
Twenty-fifth best is not best, at all.

Politically, we cannot just say that we need better schools,
better sources of energy, better transportation, better
health care, better control of our resources and finances.
We cannot just say that, because people need to know the story.
Those things have to be carried by the story of what is happening!

Once we know the story of those old paths, of the gathered
grain, and the coal and steam and factories, and the story
of what is happening now, we will be able to move confidently

above the evidence of what used to be, and what must now be.  

We need to know the story, 

and we need someone to tell the story.